CLASSICAL MUSIC

CLASSICAL MUSIC; Making the Case for an Odd and Anxious Romantic

By PAUL GRIFFITHS

Published: August 16, 1998

''HIS time will come,'' Arnold Schoenberg confidently asserted in a memorial tribute to his mentor, colleague and brother-in-law, Alexander von Zemlinsky. As that statement implied, by the time of Zemlinsky's death, in Larchmont, N.Y., in 1942, his music had been almost totally forgotten, a victim of the derailing of Austro-German musical culture under the Nazis, of changes in taste that had made his luscious, lustrous hyper-Romanticism seem old-fashioned, and probably also of his self-doubts, which kept him from doing much on his own behalf, even though he held important posts as a conductor.

But Schoenberg's prophecy has been borne out during the last three decades, and not just once but at least three times. The centenary of Zemlinsky's birth, in 1971, prompted the first flurry of revivals. In the 1980's his operas were brought back to life, and there were several important recordings. Now James Conlon is pressing the case again, with five Zemlinsky albums recorded under his baton for EMI Classics in Cologne, Germany, and more to come. Two of the operas are represented in this first batch, ''Eine Florentinische Tragodie'' and ''Der Zwerg'' (''The Dwarf''), together with collections of orchestral pieces.

''I am convinced,'' Mr. Conlon writes of Zemlinsky, ''that in several years a wide and enthusiastic public will know and love his works.'' That conviction leaps out of these performances, which are strong, sumptuous and finely detailed. Mr. Conlon also allows one to make a good guess as to why this music still needs zealous advocacy: though all of it is beautifully made, only rarely did Zemlinsky push himself above the giants he admired -- Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Strauss -- and produce something that while belonging in the same Romantic sunset as the rest of his output, is utterly his own.

At his best, Zemlinsky is a head above other late Romantics whose claims have recently been advanced, like Franz Schreker and Hans Pfitzner. And at its best, his music can stand comparison with anything Richard Strauss wrote between the wars. But that best is restricted to just a few works, which certainly include ''Der Zwerg,'' along with the Second String Quartet and some of the songs: all works composed during the period from 1914 to a few years after World War I.

The lesser pieces have their pleasures, which Mr. Conlon's recordings duly notice. Of the two symphonies (EMI 5 56473 2; CD), both dating from the 1890's, the Second has a scherzo with an unforgettable theme, robust and savage. Zemlinsky was in thrall to Brahms at this time, but he upped the Gypsy side of Brahms, and his music began to hint at his family origins among the Jews of Turkey.

In another work of the same decade, the cantata ''Spring's Burial'' (5 56474 2; CD), echoes of Brahms's Requiem are combined with Wagnerism. This disk also includes ''Dance Poem,'' drawn from a ballet score on which Zemlinsky worked in the first four years of the new century, and a suite of incidental music for Shakespeare's ''Cymbeline.'' It was characteristic of Zemlinsky's luckless career as a composer that the ballet, ''The Triumph of Time,'' was never produced and that the ''Cymbeline'' production, scheduled for the 1915-16 season, was canceled because of the war. Not until 1996 was the ''Cymbeline'' music performed.

Another discouragement came in 1905, when the symphonic poem ''Die Seejungfrau'' (''The Mermaid'') was first performed and poorly received. Zemlinsky withdrew the score, which was not heard again until 1984, when Riccardo Chailly performed and recorded it for Decca/London.

Mr. Conlon's version (5 55515 2; CD) is fine, but at almost 45 minutes, the piece is long for its material. Nor is its interest sufficiently enhanced by its juicy autobiographical subtext, according to which the mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen's story represents both Alma Schindler, who had recently abandoned Zemlinsky for Mahler, and the composer, who in human society felt like a fish out of water. The piece is coupled with the Sinfonietta of 1934, which is fluent and even vigorous yet impersonal.

The period of Zemlinsky's greatness had come earlier and was defined partly by cultural shifts happening around the time of World War I, partly by his discovering subjects that allowed him to give voice to his keenest anxieties. Those anxieties had to do with his body. Alma Schindler recorded in her diary before the beginning of their affair that he ''cuts the most comical figure imaginable -- a caricature, chinless and short, with bulging eyes.'' This assessment may have been ungenerous, but it was evidently shared by Zemlinsky, who found opportunities for poignant self-identification in the story of ''Der Zwerg.''

As for the wider cultural context, there, too, he found himself an oddity, a dodo among the modernist swallows. He conducted the first performance of Schoenberg's atonal opera ''Erwartung'' and admired the work of Berg and Webern. But he could not go that way himself. If, in the light of what his Viennese friends were doing, tonality had to be seen as only a part of musical reality, it was a partial reality he needed. If atonality was now in some sense the truth, he preferred illusion.